I agree a lot with Milton Friedman, but disagree quite a bit with his son David (although I agree with the general direction of his political philosophy). David is an anarcho-capitalist, extremely averse to the idea of government. I don't think David understands human nature. He needs to read Hobbes.

David is a teacher, like Milton was. And David is as outspoken like his father was. I got a chance to hear a section of his extensive talk on the subject of climate change, and it was refreshing to find common sense being brought into this arena of mindless frenzy and "expert"-driven confusion. 

I have argued that increasing CO2 creates NET BENEFITS for LIFE ON EARTH (not just mankind). That's what my quick "back of the envelope" calculations lead me to conclude. Summarised below:

- very little real increase in global temperatures from CO2 due to the biological sink on this earth (and other negative feedback loops)

- increase in CO2 is great for plants, and the more the plants the more the fish and animals. The more the plants and fish and animals, the more the humans (actually this is more complex: with freedom there will be FEWER but richer humans who value and take more care of wildlife and nature).

- no possibility of elimination of key ecologies like the icy north pole, thus no risk to polar bears and the like.

- no possibility of harm to key natural formations like ocean reefs which enjoy slightly warmer water to cold.

- mankind will generally be about SIX times wealthier in 2100 than it was in 2000, therefore able to cope far better with minor changes in sea level (if any), while taking better care of the environment.

- in other words, NO harm. ONLY good.

David Friedman points out, though, that we can't be confident about any of this (whether there are net benefits or net costs). I disagree (I'm clear that CO2 is GOOD, based on the kinds of self-evident arguments outlined above), but agree with many of the holes he picks in the arguments of panicky alarmists.

For those among you who are still panicky, and in need to jump off a building due to "global warming", please watch this video. It might calm your nerves.

I've provided extracts from his blog post on this subject below the video, for those in a hurry.

The key points, in David's own words.

An increase in global temperature would also have good effects. The question is not whether there are any bad effects but whether there are net bad effects.

Nobody knows if the net effects would be good or bad, and probably nobody can know.

We are talking, after all, about effects across the world over a century. How accurately could somebody in 1900 have predicted what would matter to human life in 2000? What reason do we have to think we can do better?

Should we, for instance, assume that Bangladesh will still be a poor country a century hence, or that it will by then have followed the path blazed by South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong—and so be in a position to dike its coast, as Holland did several centuries ago, or move housing some miles further inland, at a cost that can be paid out of petty change?

Should we assume that population increase makes agricultural land more valuable and the expansion of the area over which crops can be grown more important, or that improvements in crop yield make it less? The numbers required to justify such belief are at best educated guesses, in most cases closer to pure invention.

Someone who wants to prove that global warming is bad can make high estimates for the costs, low estimates for the benefits, and so prove his case to his own satisfaction. Someone with the opposite agenda can reverse the process and prove his case equally well.

An alternative is to ask whether we have any reason to expect, a priori, that costs will be larger than benefits. There are, I think, two answers.

The global warming controversy involves changes over not a year or a decade  but a century. It is hard to see any reason to expect gobal warming to make us, on net, worse off. 

For the past many thousands of years, humans have lived and prospered over a range of climates much larger than the range that we expect the climate at any particular location to change by. If we have no good reason to believe that humans will be substantially worse off after global warming than before, we have no good reason to believe that it is worth bearing sizable costs to prevent global warming.

I know it is hard for people to spend the hundreds of hours that I've spent researching this issue of climate change. It is so much easier to BELIEVE.

So much easier to believe the stuff that Uncle Sam or Big Brother tells us. Or the Big Media. Or Big TV.

Cognitive effort is hard work. Reading dense material is hard work. Thinking is EVEN harder. Asking questions is almost impossible for "normal"  humans (particularly "university" educated ones who've crammed so much "knowledge" they have forgotten to think).

We all like short-cuts: Just tell us what to believe. We like jumping to conclusions (btw, if you've read Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow you'll know why). 

But the good thing is that some of us who don't like to read or to think are willing to watch a few videos.

For the LAZY READERS of my blog (I know a few!) who don't like thinking but are willing to watch – mindlessly – some videos, here are three excellent short videos by the super-highly qualified Dr. David Evans who was the leading terrestrial carbon modeler for the Australian Greenhouse Office for a decade. He was also a climate alarmist at one time but like Lovelock, has admitted to the truth.

Dr. Evans now seems to spend his time DEMOLISHING the carbon scare.

In the end he doesn't yet go as far as I do (I claim that more CO2 is GOOD for life on earth), but he does explain VERY COGENTLY the key arguments to bin carbon alarmism.

If you are particularly lazy and have never asked any questions regarding this topic before, be prepared to have serious tremors (earthquakes!) in your brain after watching these videos.

Please take the time, though, to read for yourself and find your own answers. Please don't "believe" me. Don't believe Evans. Don't believe Lovelock.

USE YOUR HEAD. What else is it meant for?

The Science – Part I [THIS SHOULD BE ENOUGH FOR THE MORE LAZY AMONG YOU]

The Science – Part II (you don't need to watch this unless you are particularly curious)

And if you are curious about the attempt by carbon alarmists to establish a World Government (don't forget Bob Browns' Earthians!), here's a short video. This is serious stuff. Not for the lazy minded. If you do watch this and don't end up seriously alarmed, you've simply not paid attention.

Also see this:

In this world there is virtually none who will admit his mistake.

Fortunately, we now have one man who actually admits his mistake. Therefore James Lovelock has gone up highly in my esteem.

In 2006 Dr Lovelock predicted the Earth “would catch a morbid fever” that would destroy six billion people – "the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable,” he predicted. In 2009, he was telling the Guardian that "we may face planet-wide devastation worse even than unrestricted nuclear war between superpowers". [Source]

In 2010 this is what he said: 

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory. [Source]

Today he says: 

"I made a mistake," the 92-year-old scientist now says.

“We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” Dr Lovelock reflects. “The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time. It [the temperature] has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising – carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened."

A couple of years ago, when I decided to find out the answer for myself, I spent tens (nearly a few hundred) hours studying this issue before concluding that the data simply don't add up. I've consistently stated, ever since, that greater CO2 (of course up to a point!) in the atmosphere provides a NET BENEFIT to life on earth. In any event, its harm is small or non-existent.

Few on this planet have dared articulate this – that CO2 is actually GOOD for us. But the opposing force, which claims that CO2 is bad for us, has been entirely vanquished.

Now I invite those with an OPEN MIND to study further. They will inevitably come to the conclusion I've come to – that CO2 is not mankind's enemy. It leads to greater food, greater economic growth. And no negative consequences. 

I might be wrong on this completely opposing view to what is held by a good number of people, and remain open to further data to refute this opinion, but to date, nothing has yet persuaded me against this optimistic view. Only data will persuade me that I'm wrong, but such data doesn't yet exist.

So go forth and multiply. And worry about bad toxic chemicals, but not about CO2 or water vapour.